Post by ritsukaorchid on Nov 13, 2011 10:10:22 GMT -5
>> The second mission was as strange as the first. I went from Tiuana to the mid-west, and got the specifics on the border of Missouri and Kansas. A big business tycoon in Witchita had complained about the heroes in his city gone bad and scaring away all his coustomers by killing a few of them, and maiming the others. I investigated by motorbike and spent two days tracking down all the heroes.
When I had them all under mind suspension (by a device given to me by Red Tornado not a month before) I hooked them up one by one to my computer for diagnostics. Their minds were shut down to basic mode, their body functions varying widely, and with good reason. Whoever had control of their bodies, it was not them. They had barely eaten, slept, or had more than a few cups of water in the passed few weeks.
The puppet master for all of them had forced their minds into strange, hypnotic states, turning all of them into villans by force.
I got help from their friends and the few families that knew the truth about them to change them back into their civilian selves, and admitted them to the same hospital to recover. But I didn't release them from their mind trances at the time. I followed the patterns of their attacks, traced the people back, and within fourteen hours I had the source of their mind control.
A black market man's son, only my age of 13 and a super genius inventor, had made a time device to make the sound of a metranome pierce the mind and place an evil signal there that he could control with a hand-held computer he kept on his person.
He caught me with the device while we fought, but it had malfunctioned slightly, so I still had use of half my body not under his control.
After a few hours of struggle and faking being controlled, I returned to him, and waited until he was distracted to plant one of my smoke bombs on him. While he was occupied with that I disengaged all his devices to return his victims to their original selves, including myself, destroyed the device itself beyond repair and took the hand-held for evidence. I tied up the boy and searched for the blueprints throughout his home - they were nowhere to be found. And when I returned to the room I'd left him in, he was gone.
So, I went back to the hospital to let the heroes out of their mind trance. They came to slowly, and I left them to their reunions. But when I went to find the boy's father, or even return to find more evidence, I found not a trace of the pair left and their home burned to the ground. A fire, the fireman said, had destroyed everything inside. No bodies found.
Again, there was no reason for me to stay, no leads left. I sent my mission file to the computer as half-accomplished, and on July 1st I was given my third mission.
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Log 3)
>> My final mission was to meet a family of four supers. The father had super strength, the mother was telekinetic, and the twin girls had the ability to join and become a powerful magical soul that could easily take on an army with just its bare hands. They met me in the courthouse of Evington, Virginia, on July 2nd to discuss my mission.
Children from the high school kept dropping out of school, usually in the junior or senior year, and all joining the same organization. Oddly, their peers all reported them seeming 'spacey' or 'brainwashed' before they left, with a funny look in their eyes. After investigation by the Romani family of supers they'd realized someone had been brainwashing the teenagers into joining the company.
Called IntoSpects, it was supposed to be innovating technology for the future by taking kids who couldn't graduate and turning them into geniuses with a computer. But some of the kids who dropped out, dropped out of full scholarships, like art or music students with no idea how to hack into computers, let alone fix a machine that could. So suspicion rose. After the investigation, the Romani family had come to the conclusion that there was one main man behind it all without coming to his identity or the reason he had targeted these kids, or this state, or technology at all. They just knew he was a man by his voice on a television ad they'd found hidden in the school AV room.
So, afraid they were in over their heads, they'd phoned in back-up. Robin.
I set out to find the source of this strange occurrence. Then I infiltrated, explored, and found the bad guy nowhere to be found. Gone, as if he'd never been there in the first place. That had been the frustrating part. Then, I'd found a secret room filled with highly trained guards. I kicked and had been kicked for over a half hour before the family came to help him. I could hold my own, all right, but these enemies were different.
Off-the-scale, just like the chimera. Almost as if specifically trained to fight him. Not trained to fight the Romanis, though, thankfully, so they overcame them in no time. But after they'd all been carted away by the organization, I had found but one item in the room, and been forced to hand it over as well. Straight to the League, they said it'd go. I gave it up reluctantly in the end.
All the kids were gone. There was no technology left in sight, save for what was needed to run the building. It looked as empty as it had been when it was first build. Only far more dusty.
After thanking the family, they'd almost convinced me to go to a hospital for the beating I'd taken, but I couldn't risk them finding me out. Medical records were forever. So, we parted ways, and my relaxation night started off full of pain. It was only until I got to the hotel that I realized my ribs were broken in two places. It'd been a struggle to get up to my room, but after I had locked myself in I felt better. I wrapped my rib cage up best I could and tried not to move around much afterwards, but I still had injuries to take care of, so I was grunting and groaning every time I turned a sore direction to reach for something else.
Cuts bandaged, bruises blossoming, and chest aching, I took out some emergency meds I had used last time I'd broken some ribs and lay back in the cushy, clean hotel bed, sighing in generic relief that I could finally relax.
Instead of picking up the TV remote, I picked up my glove transmitter and phoned out. One of the team was bound to pick up so I could ask them for a bit of help.
So, I left a message with Wally, and my meds temporarily put me to sleep. Not long after I was woken up by a huge lizard climbing through my window. I was completely incapacitated, but we spoke for only a minute before my drugs put me under for good. I spun a lie about an abusive father to keep her off my hero trail... a bit too late to realize she was a hero herself.
I woke up the next morning with Wally in my bed. I scared the crap out of him, he scared the crap out of me, and as he blabbered about the dragon he'd spoken to I realized I hadn't been hallucinating. Spit-fire, she'd called herself, and she had come into my hotel room to steal the soaps and towels and things. She lived on the run supposedly and had no means of getting the supplies anywhere else. But she had left in peace, and Wally hadn't been hurt, so alls well that ends weird I guess.
That day, we finished up my rations and got on the bikes. I hitched them together and Wally towed me home. With a few blind folds and a helicopter, we got inside, and as I was being taken care of Wally was sent home. Mission, failure. But at least it didn't have a worse ending.
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